1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic steering system for a vehicle for automatically parking the vehicle without recourse to steering by a driver.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Automatic steering systems for vehicles are already known from Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 3-74256 and 4-55168. These automatic steering systems for vehicles utilize an actuator for the conventionally well-known electric power steering system, and are designed so that reverse parking or longitudinal parking is automatically performed by controlling the actuator based on a relationship between the traveling distance of the vehicle and the steering angle which are stored in advance.
In the system described in the above-described Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 4-55168, if the driver operates a garaging switch or a longitudinal parking switch, the steering is switched to an automatic steering mode when the vehicle is in a stopped state and the driver is not operating the steering wheel, and if the driver operates a power steering switch during automatic steering, the automatic steering mode is ended and steering is restored to a power steering mode.
In this automatic steering system, when the driver has operated the longitudinal parking switch by mistake to indicate the garaging of the vehicle, even if the garaging switch is operated again, the control unit conducts a predetermined processing to start the automatic steering for longitudinal parking. For this reason, there is a problem that the operation for again starting the automatic steering for the garaging of the vehicle is troublesome, and the operability is poor. Further, when the longitudinal parking switch or the power steering switch is operated by mistake during automatic steering, for example, during the garaging of the vehicle, the steering is restored to the power steering mode and hence, if the driver does not notice this fact, there is a possibility that the vehicle is moved in an unintended direction.